


Paradigm

by onthewaters



Category: One Piece
Genre: Aftermath, Impel Down, Injury, Kink Meme, M/M, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 22:35:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onthewaters/pseuds/onthewaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this prompt (http://op-fanforall.livejournal.com/685.html?thread=3245#t3245) on the kink meme: Ace fic post-Impel Down. </p><p>I wrote it back in 2008, before we knew what would happen. So it's very, very jossed. Pity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradigm

**Author's Note:**

> ***
> 
> If you consider posting this work to Goodreads: Please do not do it. These stories are fanfiction, and I don't want them near a site that's primarily for published original fiction.
> 
> While I appreciate that you might enjoy having them on your Goodreads shelves, please respect my wishes.
> 
> Thank you.

You never knew how much you needed something until you didn't have it anymore. Didn't matter what. Devil fruit, freedom, functioning body. Things like that.

Ace was learning that the hard way. 

The girl at the tavern wasn't looking him in the face, concentrating on the room key which she slid across the counter with nothing more than "Enjoy your stay." Ace took it silently and went upstairs. 

Before, he would have had her charmed within two minutes. Better add "women who took one look at you and swooned" to the list.

The whole thing stung even more because he knew he had nobody but himself to blame. Teach's power was amazing, yes, and Ace had been outclassed, yes, but what had really lost him the fight was his overconfidence. It was how he rolled, always. Except Teach. 

The room was in the back and had its own bath, he'd paid extra for both of these. Ace ran a bath and opened the door for the meal he'd ordered. Nothing fancy, his money wouldn't stretch to much more. Before he'd come here, he'd already bought bandages and salves, and the man he'd mugged hadn't had that much in the first place. 

They'd brought him to some island with Marine presence for the execution, after six months in Impel Down. He hadn't listened to the name. He'd been fading in and out, the seastone shackles draining what was left of his energy. The Marines responsible for his transport hadn't liked that much, especially when they had to carry him on the ship. 

Water running, he sat down to eat. Another souvenir: he no longer fell asleep in his food. For various reasons. Bread, cheese, soup, and fruit. Nothing too hard on the teeth he had left. Bloody Teach. 

They'd taken three weeks to get to that island. Three weeks in which Ace felt better than he had for the last six months. The Marines saw to it that he got enough food, time on deck to feel the wind and the sun and lose some of the pallor he'd acquired under the sea. There were seastone shackles, but no small boxes to be locked in, no gags, no games, no laughter. 

Instead there was the ship's surgeon who took care of his wounds, cleaned out the infected areas, murmuring about how to treat all this for the next two months. Ace had laughed. The surgeon had rolled her eyes at him and told him not to give up hope. He'd laughed again, and she'd ruffled his hair. 

Which they'd let him wash. For that alone, the Marines had his eternal gratitude. For a prison under water, there was surprisingly little of that in Impel Down. 

So when they arrived at the island, Ace was able to walk off board under his own steam in the mist and fog that permeated the place from noon to midnight. And when a key was pressed into his hand, he only had to wonder for a minute or two if he was fit enough to run. Then he did.

Finished with his soup, Ace moved on to the bath. The tiles were cracked but clean and the steam brought the hint of tears to his eyes. He stripped out of his – also stolen – clothes and found the washcloth and soap. 

Chest first. Several long thin scars, looking like longboats under the lather. A half circle below his ribs, left side, from a broken bottle. It had taken ages to get all the glass out. Four ribs complaining mutedly, souvenir from Teach. Round burns on the hips, and no, the irony was not lost on him. 

Legs. Apart from the nice big rings around his ankles, mostly gashes, pretty much healed. The right knee was never going to move quite right again, and he couldn't bend it all the way or straighten it out. Also a present from Teach. The ankle on that leg was also weak, he'd twisted it again and again because of the knee.

Arms. Probably a very good reason not to go shirtless any longer. The marks from the shackles wouldn't fade for some time, he guessed, and the rest, well. Most of that was from the guards, mainly when he'd had his arms up to protect his face. His hands had been broken several times, and it still showed. On the left hand, three fingers no longer moved at all. Both shoulders had lost some movement and clicked when he moved his arms too fast.

Face. Ace grinned at himself in the mirror. The dark spaces where Teach had beaten out his teeth fit the rest of his face. His nose had those funny bumps that were left if you broke it and didn't set it. The corners of his mouth were raised with shiny tissue. There were scars along his jawbone, across the bumpy nose and his cheekbones. Teach and his rings. Any kind of hit had left him bleeding. 

He looked like a thug. An ugly, unsuccessful thug, at that. 

Ace turned away from the mirror and went to work on his back, sick of tallying damage. Especially since he couldn't remember precisely what most of them were from. In the beginning, on Teach's ship, he'd counted them all and sworn revenge for each and every one. But it had taken the nakama killer some time to get him to Marine headquarters, and by the time they'd gotten there, Ace was concentrating on breathing, and everything else didn't matter quite so much because getting enough air through swollen throat and into lungs with broken ribs jabbing in them was harder work than he'd thought. 

Teach had been right. It had been a long time since Ace had taken a real hit. Too long a time, because he'd forgotten how to even deal with normal, physical damage which didn't heal at once. 

Not that it much mattered any more. He'd learned again in Impel Down.

His hair was past his shoulders now. He combed through it with his fingers, in the absence of a brush. 

Clean. Fed. Free. And now he no longer had an excuse.

Ace couldn't do it. 

From the moment Teach had given him that last, powerful punch before handing him over to the Marines, he hadn't felt the fire. It might have been the seastone. It might have been his injuries. Maybe it was the realization that there really was nobody coming to get him. Not Whitebeard. Not Luffy. Not Shanks. 

He stood there, hands out and shaking and it wouldn't come. Each time he'd so much as tried on Teach's ship, he'd been on him with the power of darkness, and put Ace in such a world of hurt. But Teach wasn't here. 

Teach was not here. Ace gritted his teeth and tried to remember the feeling. Turning into fire without thought or effort, flickering into flame across the sky. Letting blades, bullets, pass through him with ease. Reaching out with flame and fury, battling a smoke logia above the roofs of a city. Pumping fire into his skiff for fuel. Managing to always melt his ice cream before he could eat it.

It was no use. Ace was shaking with effort and couldn't produce so much as a spark. It was pathetic.

Maybe that was why the Marines had let him go. Not because they felt sorry for him but because they knew that his devil fruit was gone. He wondered, wildly, if he could swim now. Possibly he could go right now and try. 

Somebody knocked at the door. Ace froze. The knock repeated. 

"Sir? There's someone to see you."

The tavern girl. Ace made his mouth work, not even wincing at the sound of his voice. "Who is it?"

"A lady and a gentleman who says he knows you from Alabasta."

He'd met someone apart from Luffy in Alabasta? "I, uh. Ask them to wait?"

"All right, sir." Steps moving down the hall. 

He made himself move. Checked the window. One storey down, that should be okay, even with the knee. It was still foggy out there, and cold, but if he stayed well ahead of them, they wouldn't even be able to see him. 

He got dressed, wrapped the fruit into the napkin and moved to the window. First, away from here. Then – who knew, didn't matter, purely from the Wanted posters, nobody would recognize him, and the Marines probably weren't looking too hard. He hoped.

Getting his right foot on the windowsill was painful enough that he had to take a break to brace himself for putting weight on it. Just as he shifted, something touched him. The fog solidified and lifted him right off the sill, back into the room, onto the bed. An acrid smell assaulted him and he let his head fall back. Not fog at all. Smoke.

The smoke turned into Marine right in front of him. Ace contemplated fighting, but that would mean he'd have to get up first, a feat demanding preparation. 

Smoker closed the window then turned back to regard him. 

"You look better." 

"Than what?" Ace snarled.

"Than six hours ago when you went off board." The uniform was not in evidence. Smoker wore simple trousers and shirt which made him look not quite as imposing. The cigar smoke was beginning to fill the room. Ace swallowed. The man was not on duty. Which begged the question what he was doing there.

"Am I arrested?"

"No. Unless you insist on making difficulties." Smoker sat down on the only chair in the room. Ace shifted until he was at least not lying down on the bed but braced against the wall. His back didn't like that much but he ignored it.

"Then what are you doing here?"

The man's stone face twitched. "My surgeon felt the need to know how you were."

Ace blinked. Tried to remember the Marine ship. "That was your ship?"

"Part of my fleet. Can she come up and see if you've broken anything open or are you going to try going out the window again?" He sounded exasperated, Ace thought. But then, polite conversation hadn't been happening much in the last months.

"No, I – why aren't you arresting me? Trying to arrest me?" If Smoker didn't know yet that Ace couldn't use his logia, there was no sense in telling him.

Smoker regarded him for a long moment, then sighed. "Blackbeard."

Ace said nothing. 

"I know you weren't exactly getting newspapers in Impel Down, but you did hear that he's one of the Shichibukai now, right?"

Ace nodded. 

"I want to know about his powers. The government took him on because he caught you. But they didn't ask how he did it. I need to know."

"Why?"

"None of your business," Smoker snapped, then seemed to calm down. "It's better if you don't know. Less chance of you wandering into danger."

Ace straightened against the wall. "Look, if you're letting a pirate go, and I know your reputation about that, and asking him questions so you can get dirt on a Shichibukai, something big's going to go down. Anyhow you could have asked me on ship. What's with this?"

Smoker looked as if he had the worst headache ever. "Portgas. Has it ever occurred to you that the fact that Blackbeard works for the government now does not automatically endear him to me? I've heard something about his plans for his new position and I want to know what he's capable of before he goes up against us. Currently, you're my best chance of getting that information because he tends not to leave anyone alive if he can help it."

"And if I tell you what you want to know, you're just letting me go? The great pirate hunter? Forgive me if I think that that's a little much." 

"I already have let you go," Smoker pointed out, visibly at the edge of his patience. "Even if you don't tell me about his powers, I'm not going to arrest you again." He glared at Ace's open-mouthed surprise. "Blackbeard, Portgas. I want Blackbeard."

That was – unexpected. Surprising, even. But really, he had no reason to keep Teach's power secret. And Smoker had let him go. 

"He ate the Yami Yami fruit," Ace said. "Darkness. Able to pull everything in and spit it out again in pieces. He can do that with devil fruit powers, too. And if he touches you, you can't use your power. At all."

Smoker's teeth ground down on the cigars. "I thought it must have been something like that."

"Yeah."

"Anything else?"

"He can't become darkness. I don't think. But he does take damage like a normal person. And since his darkness just eats up your power…" Ace shrugged. 

"Permanently?" Smoker asked.

Ace started, stared at him. The Marine looked back, saying nothing. 

"I don't know."

Smoker nodded. He looked as if he knew how hard that had been to say. "What will you do now?"

Good question. He wouldn't be much use to Whitebeard without his power. Luffy was somewhere in the Grand Line, and who knew where Shanks was wandering around. He could go home, he supposed. The idea didn't have much of an appeal. 

Smoker was still waiting for the answer. Ace shrugged. Smoker looked as if he'd expected that, too.

"Let my surgeon take a look at you," Smoker said, in a tone so reasonable that it make Ace's teeth grate. "You don't have to decide right away."

"Careful you don't get too nice," Ace snarled. "Might be against your image."

Smoker rolled his eyes at him. "I'll get my surgeon. Don't go out the window, Portgas, all right? I didn't go to this much trouble to have you breaking your neck."

Ace watched him walk out the door and slumped back against the wall. Maybe he'd lost his powers, his captain, his looks, and his health. In return, he seemed to have acquired a Marine ally. 

It was something to work with.

 

End.


End file.
